Black Jade

‘The girl never minds me,’ Liljana complained. ‘She always does just as she pleases.’

I smiled because what she said was true. I watched as Estrella tried to urge one of the cakes into Liljana’s hand. She seemed not to resent Liljana’s stern looks or scolding; indeed, Liljana’s oppressive care for her and her desire to teach her good manners obviously pleased her, as did almost everything about the people she loved. Her will to be happy, I thought, was even greater than Liljana’s urge to remake the world as the paradise it had been in the Age of the Mother. It must have vexed Liljana that our quest depended utterly upon this wild, magical child.

‘She was a slave of the Red Priests,’ Kane said to Liljana. ‘So who can blame her for not wanting to be your slave, too?’

As Liljana paused in stirring the stew to glare at Kane, more wounded by his cruel words than angry, Master Juwain cleared his throat and said, ‘The closer we’ve come to Argattha, it seems, the more she has relished her freedom.’

We were, I thought, much too close to Morjin’s dark city, carved out of the dark heart of the black mountain called Skartaru. Our course across the Wendrush had inevitably brought us this way. And it seemed that it had inevitably brought the knights of Morjin’s Dragon Guard upon our heels.

As Estrella began passing out rushk cakes to everyone, Liljana called for Atara to sit down, and she began ladling the stew into wooden bowls. From out of the darkness at the edge of our encampment where our horses were hobbled, a tall woman appeared and walked straight toward us. And that, I thought, was a miracle, because a white cloth encircled her head, covering the hollows which had once held the loveliest and most sparkling pair of sapphire-blue eyes. Atara Ars Narmada, daughter of the murdered King Kiritan and Sajagax’s beloved granddaughter, moved with all the prowess of the princess and the warrior-woman that she was. In consideration of our quest, she had cast off the lionskin cloak that she usually wore in favor of plain gray woolens. Gone were the golden hoops that had once encircled her lithe arms and the lapis beads bound to her long, golden hair. Few, outside of the Wendrush, would recognize her as one of the Sarni. But in her hand she gripped the great, double-curved bow of the Sarni archers, and the Sarni knew her as the great imakla warrior of the Manslayer Society. I knew her as a scryer who had great powers of sight, in space and time, and most of all, as the only woman I could ever love.

‘Vanora, Suri and Mata,’ she told me, naming three of her sisters of the Manslayers, ‘will take watches tonight, so we won’t have to worry about the Zayak trying to steal the horses.’

For the thousandth time that day, I looked back in the direction where our enemy gathered. As Atara knew very well, I worried about much more than this.

She sat down between Liljana and Master Juwain, and picked up a bowl of stew. Before permitting herself to taste any of it, she continued her report: ‘Karimah has set patrols, so there won’t be any surprises. Bajorak has, too.’

In the deepening night, the steppe’s grasses swayed and glowed beneath the stars. There, crickets chirped and snakes slithered, hunting rabbits or voles or other prey. There, forty yards to our left, Bajorak and some thirty Danladi warriors sat around their fires roasting sagosk joints over long spits. And forty yards to our right, Karimah and her twelve Manslayers – women drawn from half a dozen of the Sarni tribes – prepared their own dinner. It was our greatest strategic weakness, I thought, that the Manslayers disdained camaraderie with the Danladi men. And that both contingents of our Sarni escort neither really liked nor trusted us.

‘I would sleep better tonight,’ Maram told her, ‘if the enemy weren’t so close.’

‘Hmmph, you sleep better than any man I’ve ever known, enemy or no enemy,’ Atara said to him. ‘But fear not, we Sarni rarely fight night battles. There won’t be any attack tonight.’

‘Are you speaking as a Sarni warrior or a scryer?’

In answer, Atara only smiled at him, and then returned to her dinner.

‘Ah, well,’ Maram continued, ‘I should tell you that it’s not the Zayak who really concern me, at least not until daybreak – and then I shall fear their arrows, too bad. No, it’s those damn Red Knights. What if they charge straight into our encampment while we’re sleeping?’

‘They won’t do that,’ Atara reassured him.

‘But what if they do?’

‘They won’t.’ Atara looked up at the bright moon. ‘They fear arrows as much as you do. And there’s enough light that they would still make good targets, at least at short range.’

I touched the hilt of my sword, sheathed beside me, and I said, ‘We can’t count on this.’

‘In three days,’ Atara said, ‘they’ve kept their distance. They haven’t the numbers to prevail.’

‘And that is precisely the point,’ I said. ‘Perhaps they are waiting for reinforcements.’

‘So, just so,’ Kane said as he squeezed his bowl of stew between his calloused hands. ‘And so, if there must be battle, we should take it to them before it’s too late.’

For three days and nights, I thought, my friends and I had been arguing the same argument. But now the mountains were drawing nearer, and a decision must be made.

‘We may not have the numbers to prevail, either,’ Atara said. She positioned her head facing Estrella and Daj, who sat across the fire from her. ‘And what of the children?’

The children, of course, were at risk no matter what course we chose: attacking our enemy would only expose them to recapture or death all the sooner. It was that way with all children everywhere, even in lands far away and still free. With Morjin in control of the Lightstone, uncontested, it would only be a matter of time before everyone on Ea was either put on crosses or enslaved.

‘I can fight!’ Daj suddenly announced, drawing out his small blade.

We all knew that he could. We all knew, too, that Estrella had a heart of pure fire. Her great promise, however, was not in fighting the enemy with swords but with a finer and deeper weapon. As her dark, almond eyes fixed on me, I felt in her an unshakeable courage – and her unshakeable confidence in me to lead us the right way.

‘We must either fight or flee,’ I said. ‘But if we do flee, flee where?’

‘We could still go into the mountains,’ Maram said. ‘But farther south of the Kul Kavaakurk. And then we could turn north toward the Brotherhood school. We’ll lose our enemy in the mountains.’

‘We’ll lose ourselves,’ Master Juwain put in. ‘Try to remember, Brother Maram, that –’

‘Sar Maram,’ Maram said, correcting him. He held up his hand to show the double-diamond ring that proclaimed him a Valari knight.

‘Sar Maram, then,’ Master Juwain said with a sigh. ‘But try to remember that this school has remained a secret from the Lord of Lies only because our Grandmaster has permitted knowledge of it to very few. No map shows its location. I may be able to find it – but only from the gorge called the Kul Kavaakurk.’

For the thousandth time, I scanned the ghostly, white wall of mountains to the west of us. Could we find this secret school of the Great White Brotherhood? And if by some miracle we did reach this place of power deep within the maze of mountains of the lower Nagarshath, would we find the Grandmaster still alive? And more importantly, would he – or any of the Brotherhood’s masters – be able to tell us in which land the Maitreya had been born? For it was said that this great Shining One might be able to wrest the Lightstone from Morjin, if not in the substance of the golden bowl, then at least in the wielding of it.

‘There must be such a gorge,’ I told Master Juwain. ‘We will certainly find it, if not tomorrow, then the next day.’

‘We would find it the easier,’ Atara said, ‘if we took Bajorak into our confidence. Surely he would know what gorges or passes give out onto the Danladi’s country.’

‘He might know,’ Master Juwain agreed. ‘But he might not know it by that name. And if we can help it, he must not know that name.’

He went on to say that Bajorak, under torture or the seduction of gold, might betray the name to Morjin. And that might key ancient knowledge of clues as to the school’s whereabouts.

‘If the Red Dragon discovered our greatest school so close to Argattha,’ he told us, ‘that would be a greater disaster than I can tell.’

The fire, burning logs of cottonwood that we had found by a stream, crackled and hissed. I stared into the writhing flames as I marvelled at the near-impossibility of this new quest. There were too many contingencies that must fall in our favor if we were to succeed. Would Estrella, I wondered, when the time came, really be able to show us the Maitreya, as had been prophesied? And if she did, was it not the slenderest of hopes that we would be able to spirit him to safety before Morjin succeeded in murdering him?

‘All right,’ I said, ‘we cannot go south, as Maram has suggested. Our choices, then, are either to turn and attack or to lead the way into this Kul Kavaakurk and hope that we can lose our enemy before we betray the way to the school.’

Master Juwain’s lips tightened in dismay because either alternative was repugnant to him.

‘Or,’ Maram put in, ‘we could still try to outride the Red Knights. If you’re concerned about me lagging and can’t bear to see me make a stand against them, I could always turn off in another direction and try to meet up with you later.’

I leaned over to grasp his arm, and I said, ‘No, you’d only make yourself easy prey, and I couldn’t bear that. Whatever we do, we’ll all stay together.’

‘Then perhaps we should make our way to Delu and stay there until next year.’

He went on to say that his father, King Santoval Marshayk, would provide us shelter – and perhaps even a ship and crew to sail the lands of Ea in search of the Maitreya.

I stared at the sky in the west over the mountains leading to Skartaru, and in my mind’s eye, I saw a great hourglass full of sparkling sands like unto stars. And with every breath that I drew and every word wasted in speculation – with every minute, hour and day that passed – the sands fell and crashed and darkened like burnt-out cinders as Morjin gained mastery of the Lightstone.

‘We cannot wait until next year,’ I said. ‘And we are agreed that our best hope of finding the Maitreya lies in reaching the Brotherhood school.’

‘In that case,’ Maram said, ‘our dilemma remains: do we flee or fight?’

Atara had now finished her stew, and she sat quietly between Liljana and Master Juwain as the fire’s orange light danced across her blindfolded face. Sometimes, I knew, she could ‘see’ the grasses and grasshoppers and other features of the world about her, and other times she was truly blind. Just as sometimes she could see the future – or at least its possibilities.

‘Atara,’ I asked her, ‘what do you think we should do?’

‘Flee,’ she said. ‘Let’s see how well these Red Knights can ride.’

She waited as my heart drummed five times, then turned toward me as she declared, ‘You would rather see how well they can fight.’

I said nothing as I gripped the hilt of my sword.

‘I must tell you, Val,’ she said to me, ‘that it is not certain that the warriors who ride with us will fight just because you ask them to.’

I pointed out across the steppe and said, ‘Fifty men, Red Knights and Zayak, pursue us. And your warriors are Manslayers, are they not?’

‘Indeed they are,’ she said. Now it was her turn to grip the great unstrung bow that she had set by her side. ‘And indeed they will fight – if I ask them. But Bajorak and his warriors are another matter.’

‘He agreed to escort us to the mountains.’

‘Yes, and so he will certainly fight if we are attacked. So far, though, we are only followed.’

‘In this country,’ I said, ‘with this enemy, it is the same thing.’

Liljana made a show of collecting our empty bowls and serving us some succulent bearberries for dessert. During dinner she had not said very much. But now, as she often did, she cut me to the quick with only a few words: ‘I think you love to hate this enemy too much,’ she told me.

For a moment I looked down at my sword’s hilt, at the diamond pommel and the smaller diamonds set into the black jade. Then I met eyes with Liljana and said, ‘How should I not hate them? They might be the very same knights who put nails through my mother’s hands and feet!’

‘They might be,’ she admitted. ‘But would you then throw yourself upon their lances and put nails through my heart?’

Because I could not bear to look at Liljana just then, I returned to my vigil, staring out across the steppe at our enemy’s fires. I muttered, ‘How did they find us and who leads them? What do they intend?’

Kane scowled at this and spat out, ‘What does Morjin ever intend?’

‘I must know,’ I said. I looked around the circle at my friends. ‘We must know, if we are to reach a decision.’

‘Some things,’ Master Juwain said, ‘are unknowable.’

I turned to Liljana and asked, ‘What of your crystal?’

‘And other things,’ Master Juwain continued, looking from me to Liljana, ‘are better left unknown.’

Liljana reached into her tunic’s inner pocket and brought out a small figurine cast into the form of a whale. It had the luster of lapis and the hint of the ocean’s deep currents. Long ago, in another age, it had been forged of blue gelstei.

‘Are you asking,’ she said to me, ‘that I should look into the minds of these Red Knights?’

Just then, out of the blackness beyond the fire, Flick appeared like a tiny, whirling array of stars. His colors of crimson, silver and blue, throwing out sparks, also pulsed in patterns that I took to be a warning. What was this strange being who had followed me across the length of Ea, I wondered? Was he truly a messenger of the Galadin, a little bit of starlight and angel fire? Or did he possess a will all his own, and therefore his own life and his own fate?

Master Juwain, upon glancing at Flick, turned to Liljana and commanded her, ‘No, do not use your gelstei!’

Then he brought out his own gelstei: the emerald healing crystal that he had gained on our first quest. He held it up to the fire, letting the flickering light pour through its green-tinged translucency. Although it was hard to tell in the deep of night, a darkness seemed to have fallen over the crystal, as if it were steeped in shadow.

‘It’s too dangerous!’ he said to Liljana. ‘Now that the Dragon has regained the Lightstone, too damned dangerous! Especially for you.’

Maram regarded Master Juwain in shock, and so did I, for we had never heard him curse before. Liljana sat looking at her gelstei, cupped in her hands. As if she were holding a newborn, she swayed rhythmically back and forth.

‘I won’t believe that Morjin can use the Lightstone to taint this crystal,’ she said. ‘How can that which is most fair abide anything foul?’

‘Surely the foulness,’ I said, ‘arises from Morjin himself and our weakness in resisting him. He desecrates everything he touches.’

I turned to look at the white cloth binding Atara’s face. I couldn’t help remembering how Morjin, with his own fingers, had torn out her eyes.

‘So, every abomination, every degradation of the spirit,’ Kane said, gazing at Liljana’s blue stone. ‘But things aren’t as simple as you think, eh? Don’t be so sure you understand Morjin – or the Lightstone!’

‘I understand that we must fight him – and not with swords,’ Liljana said.

She was a wise woman, but a willful one, too. And so she clasped her figurine between her fingers and brought it up to the side of her head.

‘No,’ Master Juwain called out again, ‘do not!’

Once, in the depths of Argattha where the very rocks stank of rotting blood and terror, Liljana had touched minds with Morjin. And now, even as Estrella could not speak, Liljana would never smile again.

The moment that the gelstei touched her temple, she cried out in betrayal and pain. The crystal seemed to burn her like a heated iron, and she dropped it onto the grass. Her eyes rolled back into her head, showing the whites.

‘Liljana!’ I cried out. ‘Liljana!’

It took me a moment to realize that not only I had called to her, but Maram, Master Juwain and Atara – even Daj and Kane. And then Atara sidled closer to Liljana and wrapped her arm around her back as she cradled Liljana’s drooping head against her breasts. Estrella took Liljana’s hand between hers and squeezed it tightly. Their little comforts must have worked a quick magic on Liljana, for soon her eyes regained their focus, and she gathered herself together and forced herself to sit up straight again. She drew in ten deep breaths, and let each of them out, slowly. She wiped the sweat from her sodden hair. Finally she retrieved her blue gelstei. In her open hand it glinted, and she sat staring at it.

Then she cried out: ‘He is there!’

‘Morjin!’ I called back to her. ‘Damn him! Damn him!’

Daj rose up to one knee and leaned over to get a better look at Liljana’s crystal. He asked, ‘How, then? Where, then – here?’

‘He is everywhere!’ Liljana gasped. ‘Watching, always watching.’

She closed her fist around her stone and put it back in her pocket. Atara still embraced her, and now they both swayed together back and forth, back and forth.

Although I hated the need of it, I put to Liljana the question that must be asked: ‘Were you able to open the minds of the Red Knights?’

‘No!’ she snapped at me. And then, more gently, ‘He was waiting for me, Morjin was. Waiting to open up my mind. To twist his soul and his sick sentiments into me. Like snakes, they are, cold, and full of venom. I … cannot say. You cannot know.’

I could know, I thought. I did know. When I closed my eyes, the bodies of my mother and grandmother, nailed to wood, writhed inside me. Only, they were not cold, but warm – always too warm as they cried out in their eternal anguish, burning, burning, burning ….

‘I’m sorry,’ Liljana said to Master Juwain, ‘but you were right.’

Master Juwain sighed as he knotted his small, hard fingers together. ‘I’m afraid it’s too dangerous for any of us to use our gelstei, now.’

‘And dangerous not to,’ I said. ‘Atara can still see, sometimes, with her gift, but without my eyes, I would be blind.’

And with that, I drew my sword from its sheath. Even in the thick of the night, the long blade gleamed faintly. The silustria from which it was wrought, like living silver, caught the stars’ light and gave it back manyfold. It was harder than diamond and double-edged and sharp enough to cut steel. Alkaladur, men called it, the Sword of Sight that could cut through the soul’s dark confusions to release the secret light within. The immortal Kalkin had forged it at the end of the Age of Swords, and it had once defeated Morjin. The silver gelstei was said to be one of the two noble stones; it was also said that the gold gelstei that formed the Lightstone had resonance with the silver but no power over it.

‘Put it away!’ Master Juwain said to me as he pushed out his palm. ‘Use it in battle with the enemy, if you must, but until then, put it back in its sheath.’

I held my beautiful sword straight up, pointing toward the stars. A lovely, silver light spilled down the blade and enveloped my arm; it built around me like a luminous sea and flowed out to bathe the grasses and the cottonwood trees and the other things of the world.

‘Valashu!’ Master Juwain said to me.

And I said to him, ‘Liljana is right: the enemy is here, and everywhere. And the battle never ends.’

I turned to look north and west, toward Skartaru where Morjin dwelled. Although I could not see the Black Mountain among the lesser white peaks leading up to it, I felt it pulling at my mind and memory, and darkening my soul. Then suddenly, my sword darkened, too. I held before me a length of gelstei no brighter than ordinary burnished steel.

‘Damn him!’ I whispered. ‘Damn him!’

Now I pointed my sword toward Skartaru, and the blade began to glow and then flare in resonance with the faroff Lightstone – but not as brightly as it once had.

‘He is there,’ I murmured. ‘There he sits on his filthy throne with the Lightstone in his filthy hand, watching and waiting.’

How could the world abide such a being as Morjin and all his deeds? How could the mountains, the wind, the stars? The same bright orbs poured down their radiance on Skartaru as they did the Wendrush and the mountains of my home. Why? And why shine at all? My eyes hurt from staring so hard as I brooded over the conundrum of a star: if it let fire consume itself, it would burn out into blackness. So it was with me. Soon enough I would be dead. A Sarni arrow would find my throat or I would freeze to death crossing the mountains. Or, more likely, one of Morjin’s armies would trap me in some land near or faraway, and then I would be taken and crucified. I would descend to that dark, cold realm where I had sent so many, and that was only justice. But it seemed wrong to me, terribly and dreadfully wrong, that with my death, the bright memory of my mother, father and brothers that lived inside me would perish, too. And so those I loved most would truly die, and Morjin would have twice murdered my family and stolen them from the world.

‘Valashu!’ Master Juwain called to me again.

Where, I wondered, did the light of a candle’s flame go when the wind blew it out? Could it be that the land of the dead was not fell but rather as cool and quiet as a long, peaceful sleep? Why should Morjin keep me in this world of iron nails, crosses and fire even one more day?

‘Valashu – your sword!’

I squeezed my sword’s hilt of black jade, carved with swans and set with seven diamonds. Once, I had sliced the sharp blade through Morjin’s neck, but by the evil miracle of his kind, he had lived. My aim, the next time, must be true. I would plunge the star-tempered point straight through his heart. Atara had once prophesied that if I killed Morjin, I would kill myself. So, just so, as Kane would say.

‘Damn him!’ I whispered as I pointed my sword toward Argattha. ‘Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!’

I would cut off Morjin’s head and mount it on a pike for all to behold. I would hack his body into pieces and pour pitch upon them and set them on fire. I would feel the heat of the flames upon my face, burning, burning, burning …

‘Valashu!’ Master Juwain, Liljana and Atara cried out as one.

When my vision suddenly cleared, I gasped to see that my silver sword seemed to have caught fire. Blue flames clung to the silustria along its whole length like a hellish garment, while longer orange and red ones twisted and leaped and blazed with a searing heat. So violent was this fire that I dropped my sword upon the ground. The grass there was too green to easily ignite, but Liljana and Daj hastened to douse it with water even so. We all watched with amazement as the flames raced up and down my sword’s blade, cooled, faded and then finally died.

‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram called out. ‘Oh, my Lord!’

‘I didn’t know your sword could burn like that!’ Daj said to me.

‘Neither did I,’ Master Juwain told me.

And neither did I. Even Kane, who had once been Kalkin, the great Elijin lord who had forged this sword with his own two hands and all the art of the angels, stared at it mysteriously. His black eyes seemed as cold as the space between the stars. He held himself utterly still.

‘Like hell, that was,’ he finally said. He turned to stare at me.

‘Like hate, it was,’ Master Juwain said to me. Again he pushed his palm toward my cast-down sword. ‘Surely its fire came out of that which consumes you.’

Daj, who was bright beyond his years, studied my sword and asked, ‘Did it? Or did it burn because Lord Morjin is gaining control of the Lightstone?’